Every Saturday LaRouchePAC’s Manhattan Project hosts a town hall Q&A event with NYC area activists. This week long-time collaborator of Lyndon and Helga LaRouche, Will Wertz, addresses the Manhattan crowd.

TRANSCRIPT

DENNIS SPEED: On behalf of the LaRouche Political Action Committee I want to welcome people here today. My name is Dennis Speed and we are doing our Saturday dialogue with Lyndon LaRouche. This week our key speaker is going to be Will Wertz, long-time collaborator with Lyndon LaRouche and one of the people that joined Lyndon LaRouche in jail during the period of the 1980s when there was an attempt to destroy LaRouche and his movement. Many of you have been hearing about what we call the “Erinyes Principle.” We have been talking about this for the last several weeks, and today we will be seeing living demonstration of that in Will’s presentation, in his very presence here. We will be proceeding the way we usually do; there will be an opening, maybe more extended than normal, followed by questions and answers, and I think everybody knows the procedures on questions and answers. If you don’t, you ask a question, please try to keep it relatively short, then wait for an answer, then you have one follow-up.

I’d like to introduce my long-time friend and collaborator, Will Wertz.

WILL WERTZ: Hi, I’d like to start with a reference to the ninth letter of Friedrich Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetical Education of Man, where he says, in reply to the young friend of truth and beauty, he says, what his advice is, “Give the world in which you are acting the direction towards the good, and the quiet rhythm of time will bring about its development. The fabric of error and lawlessness will fall. It must fall. It has already fallen.” Then he goes on to say, very explicitly, “Live with your century, but be not its creature. Render to your contemporaries what they need, not what they praise.” And he emphasizes that this change must occur not only in the outer form, but also in the inner man. I think that passage from Schiller, very directly, addresses the situation we are in today. Because what we are seeing is the fall of the edifice of lies which has characterized, really, not only the United States, but the course of developments in the world over the last 15, 16 years; the simultaneous, almost simultaneous, release of the Chilcot Report on the Iraq War, and the 28 pages one week later on 9/11.

At the same time as we see this edifice of lies collapsing, we see the emergence of a new paradigm, both in terms of the culture which is commensurate with man’s actual nature as the only creative species in the universe, and also in respect to the development of a new paradigm of economics, both in terms of the Eurasian Land-Bridge, the Silk Road, the One Belt, One Road; and also in terms of the efforts on the part of the LaRouche movement, particularly Kesha Rogers in Texas, to revive the space program, both of which emphasize the actual nature of the human species as creative.

What I wanted to start with is just to emphasize that the Chilcot Report makes it very clear, the Iraq War was a war crime, a crime against humanity. It starts out by stating that this was not a justified war. It did not meet the criteria established over the centuries of a just war, that it had to be a last resort, Chilcot said it wasn’t; that there had to be an immediate danger, there wasn’t. So this is a war crime, carried out by Blair, by Bush, by Cheney, and the perpetual warfare which followed Iraq, including the wars launched by Obama in Libya and Syria, are equally war crimes, by extension, from the report of the Chilcot Commission. But you would never have had the Iraq War, you would never have had the overthrow of Qaddafi, the attempted overthrow of Assad, you would never have had the growth of ISIS and al-Qaeda as you see it in the world today, in which murder has become commonplace. Virtually every day there is another atrocity which is committed. Not just in Europe or Turkey or the United States, but also in Syria, in the Middle East as a whole, in Africa, throughout the world, this would never have happened if there hadn’t been the cover-up of 9/11. And I think that’s really the significance of what we’ve had.

You have to look at the situation to really understand it, however; you are not going to find the full truth in the Chilcot Report or in the 28 pages. If you want to know the full truth, listen to Lyndon LaRouche. Because, on 9/11 he was on a radio show based in Salt Lake City, Utah, the Jack Stockwell Show. As he was on that show being interviewed, the events developed as we know them. From that moment Lyndon LaRouche identified this as not an act of terror that was planned in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan. This, as he said, required tremendous precision, sophistication. It was a military operation, planned over an extended period of time, very clearly. So you have to look at who was responsible for this.

Several months earlier, Lyndon LaRouche had forecasted that there would be a terrorist attack in the United States. He indicated that this terrorist attack would be used to impose police-state measures in this country. That is precisely what occurred.

Lyndon LaRouche has identified not just Saudi Arabia, but rather the British Empire as responsible for this atrocity. He has indicated that there are forces that were complicit in the United States, minimally in allowing it to happen. This is not something you are going to get in the 28 pages, per se. You have to listen to what Lyndon LaRouche has said from the very word “go” in order to understand exactly what transpired and what the problem is in the world today.

I would also say that you have, in a certain sense, overlapping developments in terms of key inflection points in the post-World War II period. You have to really go back to the question of Roosevelt, the British takeover after Roosevelt’s death, and the successive efforts to reverse Roosevelt’s overall policy, that attempt carried out by the British and their allies in the United States itself, including the FBI and elements of the CIA, particularly the Dulles brothers and their ilk. Therefore, to understand the overall situation we are faced with today you have also got look at the fact that Lyndon LaRouche was directly involved, at another, earlier point; this is at the point in which, as the Reagan administration was coming into power, Lyndon LaRouche was essentially putting together the program for the Reagan administration, including, but not limited to what became the Strategic Defense Initiative. He was negotiating with the Soviets at that point in order to implement the Strategic Defense Initiative, which was completely different from the policy you have today.

Today you have a policy in which the United States is moving unilaterally with an anti-missile defense system which is designed to neutralize the opposition and launch a first strike, whereas what LaRouche and Reagan and Teller were advocating was a policy of cooperation with, at that point, the Soviet Union, in order to render nuclear weapons obsolete and impotent. That’s the difference.

At a certain point in the negotiations the earlier Soviet openness to this proposal was reversed, as Andropov became head of the Soviet Union, who was a British agent. What LaRouche said to the people he was speaking to from the Soviet Union, was that if you say no, then the Soviet Union will collapse in five years. In fact, the Soviet Union did collapse in approximately six years.

In 1988, prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which occurred while LaRouche was in jail, you had the speech that LaRouche gave in Berlin, at the Kempinski Hotel, in which he said that Germany would be reunified, that Berlin would become its capital, and he proposed economic policies to develop Poland and to develop, by implication, Eastern Europe, as it became liberated from the Soviet system. This is essentially the policy that Alfred Herrhausen, the head of Deutsche Bank at that time, put forward as well. While LaRouche was in jail, Herrhausen was assassinated. Again, this was not an assassination that was carried out by unsophisticated leftist terrorists. It was a high- technology assassination, very similar, in a certain sense, to what occurred in 9/11, which suggests that it was carried out on a much higher level. And LaRouche has indicated that the assassination really came from the French, in particular, and the British.

Remember, at this point the entire effort was to prevent Germany from becoming an economic powerhouse, engine of economic development that would collaborate with Russia, at the point that reunification occurred. So what was imposed upon Germany at that point, and then the rest of Europe, was the euro Maastricht Treaty system, which is precisely what has destroyed Europe since that time. Of course you had the expansion of NATO to the East, which we just saw go farther at the recent NATO summit in Warsaw, where they decided to place battalions of NATO troops in the Baltic states and Poland, and to go ahead with the anti-missile system in Europe. Of course at the same time you have an anti-missile defense being set up in South Korea, the THAAD system. Lyndon LaRouche has been at the center of these developments.

And of course in the last few weeks we have had the Brexit vote, which threatens the very existence of the EU and we have also had an attempted coup in Turkey, a NATO member, in which approximately one-third of the generals of this NATO army are suspected of participating in the coup.

So, what we are looking at is a momentous moment in history, in which Lyndon LaRouche’s voice is the voice you have to look at and you have to hear, if you want to know exactly what has occurred, because he has been there, in each of these situations. He has been, really, at the center of the policy issue, whether it’s what occurred in 1988-’89 or whether it’s what happened on 9/11.

The point that I would make is that we have to basically come to certain conclusions in respect to the system which has fallen and also the system which has to replace it. The system which is falling is the British System. 9/11 was carried out by the British, but with the Saudis essentially as a satrap of the British Empire. The British Royal Family works directly with the very people who were the key perpetrators of 9/11; this includes Charles, as well as the Empress Elizabeth.

And at the other hand, LaRouche has proposed a very specific campaign to reorganize Deutsche Bank in Germany. Deutsche Bank has something in the range of $72 trillion in derivatives holdings; 51% of their tangible assets are toxic, which means they’re unsaleable, therefore you don’t even know what they’re worth. And this bank has been identified as really the center of the systemic risk of the entire system.

And that bank however was not always like this. That bank had a directly opposite policy, which was the policy of Herrhausen. And so what LaRouche has proposed is that we return to the Herrhausen policy, that Deutsche Bank be reorganized, that there be a committee that goes in and basically determines what values, if any, are valid, and those which are not should be discarded. And there should be an injection of capital, such that the bank can actually extend credit for real production, which is what Deutsche Bank used to do. And this proposal can serve as a model for the rest of Europe and it can also be an impetus for making sure that similar policies are carried out here, including Glass-Steagall, which is in both party platforms, but is still far away from being implemented. Plus the overall Hamiltonian policy of credit-extension emphasis capital intensive industries, fusion power, and the space program.

And the key concept in all of this is productivity. You’ve got to actually shift the entire geometry away from the British system’s emphasis upon speculation and reduction of the world’s population by billions, really, which is what their policy is, and you’ve got to shift it towards an actual economic policy that’s oriented towards the actual nature of man as creative, as creative, as productive.

So I’ll just leave it with that and open it up for discussion.

Q: Hello, everyone. Hi, Will. This is Alvin. Of the many things you covered in this overview, in this global process that’s unfolding at a very rapid pace, I wanted to shift into what took place earlier this week. As you just referenced a couple of minutes ago, regarding Glass-Steagall appearing, most dramatically, it seems to me, suddenly, on the Republican platform, but as you mentioned, still a long way to go from actually passing. Nevertheless, Wall Street is not amused, and all the counter-articles and so on, to try and crush what continues to grow, continues. So even in this almost indescribable convention center, where they choose statesmen, like the TV character Chachi to address their audience and deliver an address, no word yet on what the Fonz has to say about all of this, but this is the kind of level it is. Yet, this is brought in, and introduced. And so there’s a process underway.

And I thought back to some seven years ago when I had a conversation with a neighborhood fellow on Glass-Steagall, and a couple of days later he came back to me and said, “You know that Steagall guy wanted to get rid of Glass-Steagall soon after he put it in,” and I wasn’t aware of that, so I inquired around about what that was. And this “Stea-gall,” as he wanted to be known, this Southerner, was a rabid segregationist. Not really a good person; so the question was, how could such a person want to put something like this forward? And the response I got was simple: Because everything was about to go to Hell. The South had never been reconstructed, and it would take FDR to electrify it, so that’s why he was doing it. Of course, whatever he tried afterwards didn’t matter because FDR took it and ran with it.

So I think of that when I think of the various characters or cowards or whatever you want to call them, that make up the legislative branch of our government, and might they be now just be finally be turning the corner to realize that; as other events throughout the whole globe, particularly the problems of the Brexit and all this insanity, that since no one a solution, that they might actually, if we do what we need to do, come around and pass this thing?

WERTZ: I think your last point is the issue: If we do what we need to do.

I wouldn’t have any illusions that the fact that the thing appears in the Republican and Democratic platforms means that it’s going to be implemented, because the problem is, you have to look at this from the standpoint of Hamiltonian economics. This is obviously critical to the whole Manhattan project and LaRouche’s Four Laws which are essentially based upon the four reports put forward by Hamilton. There are very few people who actually understand Glass-Steagall from the standpoint of the Four Laws and what has to be done.

So our job is to really educate people and to push forward with the whole picture of Hamiltonian economics. Which means that you not only have the bank separation, which you have under Glass-Steagall, but you’ve got to have credit extension for productive purposes. And it has to be not in green projects, but it has to be for capital-intensive projects, and specifically it has to be for such projects as fusion power and the space program. And if you don’t have that conception, then you’re not going to get a Glass-Steagall that’s really Glass-Steagall.

And I think the importance of what Lyndon and Helga have emphasized in terms of Deutsche Bank, is critical in this. In a certain sense, I think people should focus on that, because this is an initiative which can turn the entire balance in the world, in the direction of the kinds of policies that are required to reorganize a bankrupt system which is driving the world to the point of thermonuclear war. And the point that LaRouche has made is if you don’t get this transformation of Deutsche Bank, quickly, then you could have chaos, not only in Germany, but throughout Europe, and throughout the entire trans-Atlantic sector, which would really increase the danger of thermonuclear war. So this is really the crucial thing that has to be done.

Now in recent days it’s been reported that there’s an internal debate in Deutsche Bank—it’s called “Project Jade”—it’s been covered in the German press. And what they’re considering is whether they should continue to go forward with the British idea of a universal bank, universal banking. So LaRouche’s proposal is actually intersecting a debate within Deutsche Bank, which is not a debate so far around LaRouche’s policies, but the fact that we are hitting these Deutsche Bank branches all over the world with Lyn and Helga’s proposal, could actually create the conditions under which this could actually be accomplished. Something which otherwise seems impossible, this could go into effect.

So I think that’s really the way we have to look at this, and not be, in a certain sense, overly impressed with the inclusion of Glass-Steagall in these two party platforms.

Q: [Daniel Burke] Thank you. Hi, Will. Well I was quite moved by Diane’s comments in the webcast last night, when she pointed to the idea that in a moment of tremendous global crisis, you have to grab on to the future, and that has to be where you center your identity, so to speak.

So, I want to ask you to give a little bit more context for this Deutsche Bank initiative. Because, for example, I know very little about the activities of LaRouche and his organization in promoting the Productive Triangle, but I see that this is related to that, both in terms of why it could work for Germany, why it could work at this specific historical point, and in terms of what needs to be developed out of this. I would put into this the fact that we have the news last week that Siemens has agreed to a very large deal in which they are working on the high-speed rail line between Moscow and Kazan. So we have the largest, or the most important German industrial company working on that perspective.

And finally, I would add into that milieu the fact of what LaRouche has been emphasizing in terms of his parallel work with Putin, which does overlap in all of this discussion, as well. Could you give us a little bit more context?

WERTZ: Sure. The proposal which Herrhausen put forward was for the creation of the equivalent of Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau, which was a credit institution for reconstruction that was put together after World War II, which was responsible for what an older generation remembers as the “German economic miracle.” This was a devastated country and it rebuilt itself through that institution. And he proposed that such an approach be taken to Poland and other Eastern European nations.

Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Helga LaRouche had proposed, or I’m sure there was a discussion with Lyndon LaRouche, but he was in jail at the time, and she was in a position to carry out the initiative, the so-called Productive Triangle, which was then later extended to be the Eurasian Land-Bridge and a World Land-Bridge, which we now see advocated, by particularly the Chinese, and also, of course, the Russians are working directly with the Chinese in terms of the Eurasian Economic Union and the whole Silk Road perspective. So this has come into existence. What we had proposed at that point, which was initially a European proposal, in terms of a Productive Triangle in which you would have a triangle running from I think it was from Berlin, Paris, Vienna. And this is an area of the greatest productive economic density in Europe and population density; and so this was the idea, following the fall of the Wall, that you actually move forward. Take that opportunity to actually develop the common interests of humanity.

And unfortunately that opportunity was missed. And it was missed following the assassination of Herrhausen, which was meant to be an intimidation of the Germans, particularly Helmut Kohl, the Chancellor, to go along with this stranglehold, which has been imposed upon Germany and the rest of Europe, called the Maastricht Treaty.

At the end of World War II there was a proposal, I believe it was the Morgenthau Plan, which was to deindustrialize Germany. Obviously, the policy of the Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufbau was directly opposite to that deindustrialization policy. But Maastricht and the EU have been essentially an expression of the Morgenthau program of deindustrialization. But there still is an economy in Germany; there is a greater concentration of productivity potential in Germany, than elsewhere in Europe.

And the other side of this is, that you have certain circles in Germany, what’s called the Mittelstand, that is small and medium-sized businesses; but you also have certain political institutions, including people like Steinmeier, former NATO official General Kujat, Willy Wimmer, others, who really want to break away from this anti-Russian policy and work directly with Putin in terms of economic development. And by working with Putin, also working with China.

So, you have to basically bring that combination to the fore; and I think the proposal on Deutsche Bank and that Lyn and Helga have advocated, is crucial to realizing that shift. At the same time, you have, with the attempted coup in Turkey, you also have a potential for a major shift in terms of the whole situation in Syria. And again, Putin is at the front and center of this. As you know, here in Manhattan, Putin last year, in September at the General Assembly of the UN, proposed an international fight against terrorism; along the lines of the World War II alliance against the Nazis. The U.S. has resisted that under Obama; and the British have resisted it, they continue to resist it. But with the attempted coup in Turkey, there is a potential that Turkey might begin to work with Russia and Iran in Syria. This is not realized as of yet. Just today, Lavrov reiterated that the Russians have provided certain information to the Turks about the arms and jihadists who continue to go across the border into Syria from Turkey. He said, we expect that they will answer those questions, and that they will take measures that are appropriate, if the warming of relations between Russia and Turkey is to proceed.

So, what Lyndon LaRouche said just the other day is, what you have to watch is, is Putin able to pull Erdogan into an effective fight against ISIS and al-Nusra; which, in fact, Turkey has supported, along with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and of course the British and Obama over this entire period.

I think the real issue here is to bring the United States into an alliance with Putin and the Chinese around the BRICS process the way we have expressed it; around the whole One Belt, One Road policy; and obviously around space cooperation. And those areas which actually emphasize the nature of man from the standpoint of increases in per capita productivity; that’s the real issue that’s in the center of all this. It has always been in the center of what Lyndon LaRouche has advocated; which is the policy of Hamilton — that the real source of wealth is the productive powers of the mind. You have to have an economic policy which fosters those productive powers of the mind. This is a concept which LaRouche developed many years ago, which is called potential relative population-density; and the basic idea is that you want to increase relative population-density and the standard of living of that population. But the key thing you have to focus on, is increasing the mental potential which is the productive powers, the creative powers of the mind. That’s the source of wealth, that’s the source of the future for humanity.

Going back to this book from Schiller, what he said is, “Live with your century, but do not be its creature.” This has not been a good century, the last one; and this one has started out poorly. So the point is, don’t be a creature of your environment, of the popular opinion that surrounds you; don’t just tell people what they’re going to praise, but what they need. That’s what Lyndon and Helga LaRouche have done, that’s what this movement has done; and that’s what is really needed by humanity at this juncture.

Q: Hello, my name is D—A—. We have got the 28 pages released. Two things: One, they were released; and we got the Congress to do something. Before this, it was just sitting there. I thought that what was going to happen after that was to remove Obama; but nothing happened that way. It’s like they did something, and then they forgot what they were doing. [laughter]

We have Putin, which is a positive thing; we have Obama, which is a loose cannon, running around shooting cannonballs at everybody. The things we want to do, are going to be destroyed because he’s there; and perhaps the whole world may be destroyed because of him, Obama. Killing, killing, killing. We have two sides. One is the bestiality side, Obama; and the positive side, humanity, Putin.

We have a possibility of the 25th Amendment; how can that be pursued? We have many Congressmen; what’s going to happen when they go out of session? That’s going to happen at the end of this month. We got to do something; we can’t just sit here. What can we do?

WERTZ: Well, I agree with you. Once the Chilcot Report had been released, and once the 28 pages were released, then there should have been, and there must still be, an outcry to reverse course totally; including removal of Obama. That’s the whole point. His policy in Libya, his policy in Syria, his policy of warfare against Russia and China; these are crimes against humanity which are based upon the lies and cover-up of 9/11 in the first place, and also of the Iraq War. For instance, the State Department basically said after the release of the 28 pages, that there will be no change in U.S. policy towards Saudi Arabia; they’re our trusted ally. The same ally that was responsible for 9/11.

Q: [follow-up] So, have we had a chance to go —

WERTZ: The same ally that we’re working with right now, that is supporting ISIS and al-Nusra. So, the point is, that has to be changed immediately.

Also, it’s Obama who says we have a special relationship with Great Britain; after it has just been documented that Great Britain — along with Bush and Cheney — were responsible for war crimes in terms of the Iraq War. They worked together on this; but they also worked together in terms of 9/11.

So, we need a total reversal right now with the evidence already in, with our policy in respect to Britain and our policy in respect to Saudi Arabia. The perpetrators of these illegal wars, which are crimes against humanity, they should be brought to justice; just as the murderers in the Cranes of Ibykus were brought to justice at the end of that poem. That’s what is required right now. They violated natural law. Natural law will assert itself; unfortunately, it can also assert itself by indiscriminate destruction.

So the responsibility is on our shoulders to ensure that as an instrument of natural law, that natural law actually results in a future for humanity. This whole apparatus needs to be pushed aside immediately.

It’s true, as Lyndon LaRouche said today, the Congress has well-known limitations. Some of them will do certain things which are good; but they do not operate from the standpoint of a full understanding of the nature of the crisis that humanity is facing right now. They do not operate from the standpoint of an understanding of principles of economics. Most of them are schizophrenic; some of them might say we should have a dialogue with Russia, and then are bellicose towards China. There’s a certain kind of insanity among these Congressional figures; some are better than others. What I’m saying is, it’s up to us.

Q: [follow-up] They don’t do anything. [crosstalk]

WERTZ: It’s up to us; that’s the issue. Don’t look to the Congress to do anything other than what we insisted they do.

Q: Hi everybody, I’m P— from Connecticut. A couple of weeks ago, before the 28 pages were released, I had a thought how to get it out in the best way. So, I went to all the town halls surrounding my area — I think it was a half a dozen or so. And you have to set up a meeting with the elected officials; which I kind of knew, but I wanted to drop the information off, so that at least they could read it and then see what happens after that. Most of the receptionists were very nice.

Anyway, this past week, I decided to go back on a follow-up; so I walked in the offices, and wow! There was a total blank. They wouldn’t even discuss anything — nothing. They said “this is not allowed” in our building. I said, “What kind of government do we have here?” Not to get into an argument, I said, “OK, but this is really a necessary thing that we have to do.” And I’m sure whatever was read, they know what’s going on. We need everybody now, not tomorrow.

So anyway, I left; I was very down. So I started going to the fire departments; and they know who I am. It was the same thing; it was as if somebody went around to all these public places, government buildings, and said “Do not allow anybody in here with any kind of politics.” So, I figured, I’m not doing too good. I’m going to the fire department that I grew up in, in my neighborhood. So, I went there and they said, “No, we can’t talk about this. Just leave.” So I said, “Just read it.” “No, no, no.”

So, I started walking away; and then I said, “I’m not walking away.” So, I went back in there, and I said, “How would all the first responders that died that day find out that your company didn’t do anything to bring them justice?” They said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Exactly what I’m saying. We have the opportunity for a payback.” So, they let me in, and I started talking and I explained everything about the 28 pages and blah, blah, blah. Then I said, “Look guys, I want to be proud of this station. I grew up here. I want to be proud. I want you guys to participate, do something.” I said, “I’m a messenger and this is all I do. And I hate to tell people after the fact, that you did nothing, because I mean, this is history.”

So they were, like, “OK, OK, OK!” They were signing the thing, and calling and so on. And I says, “How about a donation to help us out. Because we don’t have the funds that politicians have.” So they said, all right, and they scrapped up $50 bucks. I thanked them, and I said, “Look, what you’re doing, I wish everybody would do, because then we could get right to the end of this.”

So I left and I was happy as could be. And that was my report. [applause]

WERTZ: I think the key thing is you have to persist, as you did in that situation. You have to realize that this edifice of lies, is crumbling; it’s already fallen, as Schiller said. We just have to make sure that it’s a rapid collapse! [laughs] And that there’s the appropriate system which is put into place as the alternative, which really reflects humanity.

So it really is a question of persistence, and it underscores the importance of what we are doing, what Lyn has done, as this kind of voice. Because others can be very easily self-satisfied by what’s been accomplished already.

And I’d just go back to — if you look at this, Lyndon LaRouche has from the beginning said this was a British-Saudi operation with complicity of some forces within the United States. The British side is not really featured in the 28 pages, but you have to understand it. And I’ll just give you some indications of this: The fact of the matter is, as I said in the beginning, the British Royal Family is completely in bed with the Saudi Royal Family. It’s not clear who is the harem in this arrangement, but that’s the situation. Saudi Arabia was created by the British; the first King of Saudi Arabia, King Saud of course, was on the British payroll for over 10 years, before he finally succeeded in 1932 in taking power and creating this artificial structure.

Now, so Saudi Arabia is a British satrap. What you’re dealing with in respect to Saudi Arabia, is the British Empire. One of the things that’s not generally known, is, we’ve discussed the Al Yamamah deal, which was the arms for oil deal between the U.K. and Saudi Arabia, and the slush fund which was created, much of which went as a commission to Prince Bandar.

But the relationships between the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia, and Britain are even much closer. For instance, at Oxford, there’s an institution called the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies; this was created in 1985. Prince Charles became the patron of it in 1993; in 1990 Bandar had contributed $13-$24 million to fund this thing. Prince Turki al-Faisal, Bandar’s brother-in-law who was head of Saudi intelligence for an extended period of time — he resigned just one week before 9/11 — for over 20 years. He’s on the board of trustees of Prince Charles’s Center for Islamic Studies. One of the founders of this organization, which Prince Charles is the patron of, as Abdullah Naseef, who’s being sued by the 9/11 families for having knowingly provided funds to al-Qaeda. Another person who was on the board of trustees of this society, run by Prince Charles, was Yusuf Qarawadi, the Muslim Brotherhood cleric based on Qatar, who issued the fatwa to kill Qaddafi and to kill Assad. These are the people that Prince Charles works directly with.

And al-Turki who was the handler of Osama bin Laden, as head of Saudi intelligence he was the handler of Osama bin Laden, he’s on the board of trustees of Prince Charles’s Oxford Center for Islamic Studies. He’s also chair of the Strategy Advisory Committee of Prince Charles’s society, and this Center for Islamic Studies also had the Mohammad bin Laden Chair, which is endowed by the bin Laden family; that’s the father of Osama bin Laden. This is the organization run by Prince Charles!

And when Prince Charles and Camilla got married they invited eight royal families: two of those were al-Turki and his wife, and Bandar and his wife, al-Turki’s sister. That’s how close this operation is. So this is real: It’s not just the Saudis, it’s the British who run the Saudis. And you have the problem of the U.S. special relationship with the same British, the same Queen, as expressed not only by Obama, but by many others previously.

You also had the fact, that this was a highly sophisticated aviation task; there’s one former Boeing pilot whose name is Marshall, and he basically said that you could not carried out these maneuvers that were carried out by these pilots, without test flights going through the various maneuvers; they were very sophisticated maneuvers. Now, who are we talking about? We’re talking about Bandar; Bandar went to the Royal Air Force college in Cranwell. He graduated there. His wife’s brother also graduated there, they were classmates. Prince Charles graduated from the RAF. Prince Charles and Bandar had the same instructor, Richard Johns, at RAF. So what are you talking about? And also one of Bandar’s brothers was a commander of the Saudi military forces during the First Gulf War.

You’re talking about a military nexus which is British-Saudi which specializes in aviation. Bandar was top gun in the Saudi air force. One thing that Marshall points out in his book The Big Bamboozle is, nobody thinks that you can fly a Boeing plane on the basis of training in small aircraft. It’s impossible; so where’d they get the training? Maybe you have to look at this RAF Saudi air force connection, and then you find out that the 28 pages, what does it say? At least two people were considered to be Saudi intelligence agents: Bayoumi and Bassnan.

And these guys are known to be Osama bin Laden. Bayoumi worked for a company which was a subsidiary of a Saudi aviation company, Dallah Avco, and it was a no-show job. Before the first two hijackers arrived in the country, he $465 a month; they arrived in the country, his stipend was increased to $3,700. So he’s getting money, essentially from the Ministry of Defense; the hijackers themselves are known to have been in touch with several Saudi Naval officers while they were in this country.

Bayoumi is the guy who met them, set everything up, he signed their lease, he paid their security, he paid their first month’s rent, this guy was investigated by the FBI in 1998-1999 for terrorist connections — and not flagged. And then he’s the guy who runs this operation. The first two hijackers lived in an apartment with an FBI informant, which is stated in the 28 pages. The other guy, Bassnan, his wife receives $2,000 a month from Haifa, Bandar’s wife, and the sister of al-Turki. He and his wife also cashed two checks which came directly from Bandar, one for $10,000 and one for $15,000.

Osama bin Laden’s half-brother worked in the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington, D.C. This guy Bassnan was known to the FBI, because in 1992, he held a party in his apartment in Washington, D.C. for the Blind Sheikh.

So the point is, the evidence is in: This is a British-Saudi operation with complicity of certain forces in the United States. And if you look at it very closely, the FBI knew about these two guys; the first two hijackers were staying in an apartment with an FBI informant. What the report starts out by saying is that they didn’t pay close attention to Saudi nationals in the United States, because Saudi Arabia is out “ally.”

But we also know from other reports in the 28 pages, that from 1996 on, the Saudis were uncooperative with respect to Osama bin Laden. There was even one guy who was responsible for Osama bin Laden’s finances, all of his finances, when he was in Sudan; and in 1996, when Osama bin Laden’s operations in Sudan were shut down, this guy moved to London, the home of all terrorists. And then he moved back to Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. asked to be able to interrogate this guy; he knows Osama bin Laden’s finances through and through. And they said, “no, he’s a poor guy, he doesn’t know anything.” And they wouldn’t let him be interrogated.

And then you also have the statement that the Saudis did not cooperate either before, during or after the operation. So this what you’re dealing with here. I think that we just have to drive this whole point home: It’s the British Empire that should be shut down! They are the ones who are driving for nuclear war; they are the ones whose financial system is collapsing; they’re the ones who are committed to reducing the world’s population by billions.

So it’s not just a question of tony Blair, or Bush, or Cheney or Obama: It’s Queen Elizabeth and Charles who are responsible for this policy. So why do we have a special relationship with them? Why do we continue to work with the Saudis in trying to overthrow Assad? I think those are questions that have to be answered: Why is Obama still in office, when he’s still carrying out this policy on behalf of the perpetrators of 9/11?

And Vitaly Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the UN, on Friday sent a letter to the UN Security Council warning that there could be a military operation in eastern Ukraine, carried out by Kiev. You’re on the verge of that kind of situation, right now.

Just to conclude: The 28 pages, getting them out is a victory that we’re responsible for, and the Manhattan Project in particular is responsible for. But issue here is, this broader picture which is not fully understood by any congressman, or for that matter by most family members of the victims and so forth. So you’ve got to really proceed from this higher level of what’s at stake.

Q: [Diane Sare] I had an opportunity to be in the field for the first time in a very long time, a couple days ago, and I was a little bit surprised at how non-reactive the population of Manhattan was on the question of 9/11 and other questions; and it reminded me a little bit of a very close friend of mine who was in Iraq during the “surge” under Bush. And what happened is, he arrived there, and there were strikes, and a lot of people were killed. And the tone of our conversation — this was by email — changed, I said, “aren’t you afraid?” Because the whole thing about the Iraq War, and I think Vietnam in a sense was maybe the beginning of this, is you’re in a war where there’s no frontlines, there’s no area of combat and area where there’s not in combat, so you know that at any moment you can be blown up by an IED or whatever.

And I could detect a kind of closing. And the person said, “You just don’t think about anything else except what’s right in front of you, and that’s it. You don’t worry about the future, you don’t think about the past. You focus on your entire concentration on the specific detail that you’re occupied with, and nothing else.” And I think in a sense, the American population has begun to be in this frame of mind, because the crisis is — because people are being hit by one thing after the next, either it’s their own personal economic hardship or their kid that’s having a drug addiction, or whatever; and then you have this mass shootings on top of this. And there’s a kind of a deadness.

And I was reflecting on therefore the power of this “Living Memorial” idea, the power of Classical music as a way to give people access to what is probably overwhelming emotions about the period that we’re in; and I was thinking since Schiller has had a lot to say about this, particularly in the Aesthetical Letters and you’re here, I was wondering if you have some thoughts on Schiller’s concept of the education of one’s emotions, and how to access this in a period such as we’re in right now?

WERTZ: I think Schiller had a good commentary on the U.S. Presidential elections. He basically said those who follow their senses are savages, those who try to operate from deductive logic and formalism are barbarians. So you’re sort of confronted with barbarians and savages. That’s the geometry that’s being imposed on the U.S. population at this point. The basic point is, Schiller and Nicholas of Cusa are very much alike in what they actually argue. Schiller says a man is not man except when he’s engaged in creative play. That’s one of the major points that he makes in The Letters on the Aesthetical Education of Man.

And the point is, Schiller, like others in the tradition of Plato, as opposed to Aristotle, know that — I always refer to the short story by Edgar Allan Poe “Mellonta Tauta,” which is that the oligarchy can control you if you only think there are two pathways to truth, empiricism based on induction from sense-perceptions; or deductive logic in which you’re making deduction from categories which are also derived from sense-perception. And you’re sort of in a trap, if you think in those terms. And he compared those who advocate sense-perception to Francis Bacon, the philosopher of empiricism; and those who operate from the standpoint of logical deduction, to Aristotle. And he said that these two methods are like creeping and crawling: Which are two very good descriptions in my mind, because they sound very much alike and it’s hard to distinguish between them.

But what he says is, that’s not human nature. Human nature is characterized by soaring, not creeping and crawling, based upon hypotheses, the creative powers of the human mind.

And that’s really the task and that’s what Schiller puts forward. You’ve got to educate your emotions, such that you are actually operating on the level of creative play. And so that, for instance, rather than being just a follower of Immanuel Kant and doing your duty, your moral duty, as a negation of the negation, in other words in the negation of sense-perception which is negative, there’s got to be what Lyndon LaRouche used to call a “self-subsisting positive.” Where you’re actually doing your duty, but with joy. That’s the issue, and that’s what you find expressed in Friedrich Schiller’s poem the Ode to Joy, it’s what you find in Beethoven’s setting of that in the Ninth Symphony.

So the basic idea is that you’ve got to free yourself, from all of the sort of external conditioning and determinations of how you think, from your environment. Again, don’t be the creature of your century; live in it, but don’t be its creature. Don’t just do what your neighbors are going to praise, give them what they need. So that means rising to a higher level. Nicholas of Cusa basically puts this forward, he says, the only way you can achieve world harmony, peace, is the extent to which individuals who are otherwise fools, by operating on a level of induction or deduction, rise to the level of creative reason in harmony with the Logos. That’s the only basis upon which you can actually have cultures that are different, religions which are different, actually functioning from the necessary standpoint.

This morning, Lyndon LaRouche was briefed on a conference which was just took place in Munich this week or last week, and one of the speakers spoke about Nicholas of Cusa’s essay called On the Peace of Faith, De Pace Fidei. And he wrote this after the Turks had just taken over Constantinople, with the slaughter of Christians. And the whole point that he makes is that you can have peace on Earth to the extent that you recognize that what is common to all religions, and not even religions, he also includes Greek philosophers, who do not profess particular religions or denominations; the only basis is to recognize the nature of the human being, as both capable of creative reason insofar as they’re in the living image of the Creator, and also capable of what’s referred to as agapë, that is, love: Love of the truth, love of humanity.

And if you get people to rise to that level, then you can have peace. Not on some other level. Because effectively the empiricist will play people off against each other, playing on their emotions, playing on their fixed opinions, derived from deductive logic. That’s the basic idea.

And I think if you look at some of the great thinkers throughout history, you look at Krafft Ehricke, that we’ve referred to quite frequently, he’s motivated by this conception, that man is not an Earthling. That he’s driven by an extraterrestrial imperative. Or, you look at Vernadsky, the Russian scientist: And he argues that man, through his noëtic or creative capability, is actually a geological force within the Universe.

Or, you go back to Nicholas of Cusa, who argued that man is a microcosm of the Macrocosm, of the Universe. And that man is an instrument for the unfolding in time of that which is enfolded in the mind of the Creator. That’s man’s purpose.

And so, I think that that’s really the whole point that Lyndon and Helga LaRouche have been emphasizing in terms of a New Paradigm: We have to operate from that standpoint, not from the standpoint of littleness. Small is not beautiful. Well, neither is large, per se, either. [laughter]

But the basic point is, what is beautiful is the human being.

Nicholas of Cusa actually says that there would not be a Universe if there was not man. And it’s that conception of man which is crucial. It’s man as creative intellect; man as essentially a geological force, a noëtic force which has geological impact and extraterrestrial impact, as an evolutionary force for the further creation of the Universe. And as difficult as that may be, that’s what has got to be the self-conception of human beings and the motivation, the mission.

Q: [RENÉE SIGERSON] Hi Will. I’d like you to say a few things in that connection about Vladimir Putin. Because Lyn has emphasized in various ways, the latest formulation I heard is — and this is not a precise quote — is that when Lyn was thrown in jail, that Putin was introduced in order to rise to the occasion to fill the gap of leadership.

I had found that in general, that to the extent that Americans don’t yet fully understand the connection between the economic warfare and the military irregular warfare, terrorism, that goes on, on this planet, that it was all too easy of the enemy to simply demonize Putin, which has caused a gap, in people’s memory. Namely, the circumstances under which he was brought in which have to do with Chechnya. And the Chechen phenomenon is an arc, over this British-Saudi phenomenon. So I wonder if you would fill in the role.

I mean, most Americans, what they know about Chechens, that these two kids in Boston were Chechens, that’s what they know. They don’t know that the integral relationship between the British Empire and what later became the Saudi Arabian phenomenon. So I wonder if you would go through that, and possibly touch on what happened in Serbia. Lyn also brought that up; what happened in Serbia, during the 1990s, when Primakov — when there was an attempt to create to create a dialogue between the Russian prime minister and Clinton; and Gore et al. sabotaged this, but it was going on during the period of the Serbian war, which was sort of a pre-staging ground for everything that happened afterwards. So I wonder if you could say a few things about this?

WERTZ: Well, as Lyn has emphasized, in a certain sense, that which defines Putin’s identity was the fight against the Nazis, where something like 27 million Soviet citizens were killed — far more than anyplace else. And this included family members of Putin’s. So you think about it in a certain sense, I think, in terms of the parallel to Lyn. Lyn fought in World War II; and upon Roosevelt’s death he was approached by some of his fellow soldiers who wanted to see what he had to think about, what does this mean? And Lyn was very concerned, and said he’s being replaced by a small man. Who as it turned out was basically being run by Churchill and in this country by the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover. And did the British bidding with dropping the atomic bombs on Japan.

Now, Lyn came out of that with a commitment: He came back to this country, and I think that whole experience obviously shaped him, because he also saw the British murder of Indians, at the point at which they were fighting for independence; and independence which Roosevelt had tried to support before his death.

So that was a formative experience in Lyn’s case. I’m not saying it’s the only formative experience, but it’s a very significant one, which is parallel to Putin’s experience in terms of his family members dying. You see Putin participating in these Immortal Regiment parades in Moscow, carrying the picture of family relatives. This is what motivates him, which is a motivation which is not just — he is actually like Lyn and Helga, a patriot and also a world-citizen. He’s not just doing this for Russian interests, but he is a firm defender of Russian sovereignty, and he knows the history of the repeated attempts to invade Russia and dismember it.

The whole Chechen situation ultimately goes back to a plan to destroy the Soviet Union, which gave rise to al-Qaeda, of all things. And the basic plan was put forward by Bernard Lewis, a Brit, and in a certain sense, implemented by Brzezinski under the Carter administration, which was essentially to create an arc of crisis around the Soviet Union, in order to collapse the Soviet Union. And this later then became the whole situation in Chechnya, which is on the southern border of Russia, sort of the belly of Russia.

And the fact of the matter is that the Chechens were supported then by Saudi Arabia. They were supported by the British. Recently, Putin made the comment that there were many in the West, who instead of supporting Russia, ended up supporting the Chechen terrorists. And many of these terrorists are now, in Syria; some of the leading members of ISIS are Chechens. This is one of the reasons that Putin gave for going into Syria, at the request of Assad, for military assistance, because many of those fighting in Syria, including the Chechens prominently, but others as well, Putin realized, would come back and carry out terrorist operations in Russia, which is a continuation of this arc of crisis policy of Bernard Lewis and Zbigniew Brzezinski, which Lyn opposed in a film documentary that he did in 1999, called Storm Over Asia.

And what you have to realize is that once Lyn was released from prison, he went to Russia, and participated with circles from the Russian Academy of Sciences; he didn’t have direct contact with Putin, but many of these people were in the circles that were related to Putin. And what he was attempting to do, was, — he’s said this many times — he had worked out a plan for cooperation between Russia and the United States. At the time, he was in communication indirectly with Bill Clinton, around this; Bill Clinton was not prepared to move on the policy at the point that Lyn had the discussions with the Russians. And then, of course, he came under severe attack with the impeachment proceedings around this British set up of Lewinsky — precisely at the moment that he went to the Council on Foreign Relations and called for a “new financial architecture,” along the lines of what Lyn was proposing.

But what happened is, of course you had the Balkans war, and the dismemberment of Yugoslavia in the same general period of the 1990s, while Clinton was President. And Primakov was part of these circles in Russia, that Lyn was in contact with, in terms of the Russian Academy of Sciences. And he was an advocate of a concept which was essentially the same as Lyndon LaRouche’s: He called for cooperation between Russia, China, and India; Lyn had a Four Power concept of the United States, Russia, China, and India, to defeat the British Empire; that that combination of countries would be sufficient to destroy the British Empire.

And of course, that’s what we’re fighting for now. We’ve got three of them, we just have to bring the United States into the mix; and maybe Germany will play a role in this, as well.

But the NATO bombing started, as the point that Primakov was going to come to the United States to visit with Clinton and the flight was called off! He was in the air, and the flight had to turn around, because the bombing had started on Serbia. I mean, that’s exactly what occurred. And this is all the lead-up to the period of 9/11!

And of course, you’ve got all sorts of al-Qaeda terrorism that were incubated in this Balkans war, in Kosovo and so forth. The Saudis were all over the place; they were all over the place there; they were all over the place in Chechnya and Dagestan in that period.

So what you’ve got is, Lyn was waging this fight, for a new financial architecture, working again as he had with the SDI for Reagan, he was working indirectly with Bill Clinton, on behalf of a New Bretton Woods system, and a new financial architecture. And that was sabotaged, from within the United States, by Republicans and by Gore elements, Gorey elements in Washington, D.C.

And Clinton was not backed up by his wife; his wife stabbed him in the back in this whole process.

So that’s what you’re dealing with. There’s a certain parallelism of effort by Putin and by Lyn. And Lyn has said, Putin is a creative leader, who operates strategically, as you can see by what he’s done, particularly in Syria, but not limited to that. And he’s operating on the basis of principle: that’s the basic point, as you can see in his UN General Assembly speech last September. The principles of the UN Charter, questions of national sovereignty, no to regime change. And at every point, proposing effectively a united front, even to his enemies. I mean, Erdogan did what Putin said, apologize — and he accepted the apology. Not that they won’t continue to press for a change in policy on the terrorist issue; they will!

`But the point is, he continues to propose a joint campaign against ISIS and al Nusra. Obama has resisted. Kerry’s trying to bring something about in terms of coordination; we’ll see how that goes. But the point is that Putin really is the biggest ally that we have in the United States, and also in other locations throughout the world, along with Chinese, Xi Jinping.

And again, as Lyn just recently said, one of the critical things is to bring into existence a working relationship between certain circles in Germany, and Putin. That would be very critical right now. Also if Putin can actually pull Turkey into this fight against ISIS and al-Nusra: both of those measures would be very important in terms of thwarting the danger of war.

And hopefully there could also be coordination in terms of the economic collaboration. The Chinese asked for the United States to join the BRICS and the AIIB. Obama refused. Perhaps the Deutsche Bank initiative will facilitate that kind of shift.

Q: [follow-up] Of course the repeal of Glass-Steagall is 1999. So…

WERTZ: Yeah, exactly. It’s exactly at the point that Bill Clinton came under massive pressure, effectively because of his collaboration with LaRouche. And the possibility of a revolutionary change globally, at that moment. And then 9/11 hits, after Glass-Steagall has been repealed, and the Serbia War which again, is a war which did not have the authority of the UN. [applause]

SPEED: Good. So, we’re at our conclusion. I just want to say a couple things concerning the Manhattan Project and this particular presentation of today. We are going to be going into an implementation section now, and certainly the material that you heard and some of the things that we know about what can be done were made very clear. I did mention, and some people came in afterwards, that Will was a political prisoner with Lyndon LaRouche. They were both sent to jail in 1989. I said, that the Erinyes principle was exemplified by him: And that means, not merely that justice ultimately prevails, but that the only thing that exists fundamentally in the Universe, is justice. And if you stick by that and persist in that, that’s what triumphs, because you don’t betray it. [applause]